Swann's Way

The book itself is fascinating but the the store printing is awful, full of typos. In one paragraph I found five! Some typos change the meaning of a sentence or are confusing. There is a much more recent translation of Proust, better than Moncrief's making Proust more accessible but this isn't used by the store. For future books in the sequence I'm going elsewhere.

Getting used to the writing style was difficult at first and Proust is clearly a bit long winded, but growing old w/the characters in these four books was an amazing experience. It was the best book I have read in a very long time, perhaps ever.

One of the true classics of Western literature. Reading it for pleasure is much than reading it for credit. How can one give this anything but the absolute highest rating. I am humbled by trying to comment on it.

Presumably, one does not read a review of Proust to find out if the story is good. It's a bit like reading a review of the Bible in order to find out whether it says anything relevant about religion. Proust's place in literature is beyond doubt--how his translators fare, however, is open to debate. Mark Treharne has validated Penguin's decision to tackle this new translation with a brilliant, crisp, fresh, easily-accessible Proust. In fact, the text is so easily accessible that one wonders if something has been lost in translation along with Proust's famous obtuseness. But be reassured, the original's consistent ability to astonish with its insights into the human psyche is there throughout. This is Proust as he would have sounded had he written in English. Well done, Treharne.

I can understand why this is considered a great novel and one that was path breaking. Nevertheless the slow pace along with the long descriptive sentences made it difficult for me. I guess I'm just too traditional and like a little more plot. More interesting to me to consider as a whole than entertaining while I was reading it. My 3 * rating just reflects my own reaction while reading it -- not my "critical" evaluation of the novel.

Not easy understanding at first, but once you get Proust's rhythm you'll understand why he is held in the highest esteem as a writer. The book is deep and it slowly, thoroughly, wanders around in the paths and layers of a complex soul very quietly and without judgement. Highly recommend the Lydia Davis translation, was never able to grab onto the earlier English versions.

Amazing title that really should be standard canon for any educated reader - though Knausgaard is gaining attention for being our modern incarnation (rightfully so) the original is undeniably life-changing.

Moncrieff or Moncrieff revised by Kilmartin and Enright?--that is the question.

In spite of the experts, I think Moncrieff will stand and the revisions (and additional material) are insignificant.

I haven't compared Moncrieff's translation with the French original, though I read French modestly well with the help of a dictionary. I'm relying on two things: (1) that Moncrieff's version reads well; (2) that no critics have dismissed his translation completely, as they have Porter-Lowe's versions of Thomas Mann, for example.

The truth is that Proust is almost as difficult to read in English as in French, which is apparent even to someone with imperfect understanding of French.

Lydia Davis and company offer their own misguided translation: "misguided" because to have a different translator for each volume is a major error with any writer, particularly one as difficult as Proust.

The Rougon-Macquart novels can be translated by different hands, because style is really secondary to content in Zola, but wouldn't it be interesting if one person translated all of them? It's too bad Penguin didn't give the job to Leonard Tannock, whose four translations of Zola for them are outstanding.

It's also good that the old Modern Library set was available in seven ordinary-sized volumes for a pittance, whereas the Kilmartin/Enright set in hardcover costs a pretty penny.

I don't object to new translations on principle, but in this case I recommend Moncrieff's labor of love.

For sure, Marcel Proust could not get it "done" in 140 characters. In fact, his novel (A la recherche le temps perdu), which is now more properly translated as "In Search of Lost Time," (Note: the standard English translation had been "Remembrance of Things Past" for some 60-80 years) is generally considered the longest novel ever written. "The Guermantes Way" is volume 3, and weighs in at more than 800 pages. The morals and manners of "tout le gratin," the upper crust of French society, during "La Belle Epoque," the era of the Third Republic before the First World War, are the general subject of Proust's work, and in particular, this volume. Proust can serve as an alternate definition for prolixity... and the reader can ride along, and sometimes fall off, his convoluted, rococo prose, with the seemingly endless qualifying phrases. But far more times than not, there is much meaning in those phrases, as he takes a given thought, and sharpens and refines it. His is a portrait of a society that appeared not to have to toil for their "daily bread," (isn't that what the peasants and all those "footmen" are for?), before the distractions of TV and Twitter. It is hard to believe such a time, lost or otherwise, ever existed.

The narrator is always unnamed. He is a young man of "bourgeois origins," which can be said with a certain disdain, who seeks admission to "society," and all the "very best people." Rank, there definitely is, and more difficult to ascertain, except, of course, for the "au courant." Rank is not worn on the uniform, a la the military. "Le gratin" have all gone to see a production of Racine's Phedre: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics) (French Edition), a suitable place to "see and be seen." The play itself is a symbolic choice since the young narrator is infatuated with an older woman, the Duchess de Guermantes, and a nod of recognition and a smile would "make his day." Later in the story he takes a morning walk with the sole objective of hoping to pass her on the street. Gulp! I can remember doing the same thing in my youth. With all the flaunting of status, privileges, and "rights" from a given territory, it is as though the French Revolution never occurred. Proust has one of the characters confirm that sentiment in expressing that Waterloo was necessary in order to have the Restoration (of the monarchy.)

Proust has an extremely high degree of hypersensitivity to human relations, which is both a strength of the novel, and perhaps a curse for him personally. It takes him almost 200 pages to cover the relations of an afternoon party of Mme. De Villeparisis, who is the aunt of the Duchess de Guermantes. He commences the first volume of this novel Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1 with the madeleine, a small cake, taken with tea, which involuntarily brings back a flood of memories. On numerous occasions in this novel, I felt the same flood of memories, of matters I had not thought about in decades. For example, when leaving a dinner, the narrator puts on "American" "synthetic impermeables" (note: a euphemism) over his shoes, due to the snow. I can remember owning them in my youth, and how necessary and practical they were, and they have not been thought of since. The incident in which the narrator shreds a "top hat" could serve as a beautiful metaphor for rebellion against pathologically unjust and whimsical authority, relevant even in an age in which the "1%" don't wear top hats.

Topics in the salon drawing rooms involved, first and foremost, the "Dreyfus Affair." The French Army officer had been accused, and convicted of spying (for Germany). He was Jewish, and he was innocent, and virtually the entire "gratin" was against him. The "good guys" in the novel, such as Saint-Loup, were in favor of a re-hearing, which was so "radical" since it brought into question the judgment and authority of the Army. This "Affair" rent French society for more than a decade. Proust includes the Russo-Japanese War as well as the Schlieffen Plan (the German plan for invading France, based on the double envelopment Hannibal executed on the Roman army at Cannae in the Second Punic War). But Proust is (deliberately?) fussy on his dates, and I thought he made a mish-mash (or, as the French say, a meli-melo of the current events,) in particular flip-flopping between 1898 and 1906. I'd welcome comments on this issue.

Though there is a more recent translation that Moncrieff's, I found his fluid, and current with slang. So much so that some of the phrases don't pass the the store censor test.

The Modern Library edition has a wonderful cover with a simple strand of pearls. In the book they play a role in the relationship between Saint-Loup and Rachel, his mistress. But like the madeleine, I saw a more symbolic role for the pearls: a woman who wears them asserts a certain elegance that says: "The cave man approach won't work with me; take a bit more time, at least an hour..." Or, as Proust himself would say, with greater verbal profusions: "...like unknown flowers whose petals remain closed until the day when the predestined stranger come to open them with a touch and to liberate for long hours the aroma of their peculiar dreams for the delectation of an amazed and spellbound being."

Dumb blind luck can be a wonderful thing. 25 years ago I rented a gite (a French farmhouse), totally unaware that it was only 12 km from Illiers-Combray, the now hyphenated town of Proust's childhood home. For numerous years I returned to the same gite. It was there where I first commenced volume one, and I have walked "Swann's Way" to the Pre Catelan at least ten times. It is located in the French departement of Eure et Loir, one of the lovely areas of "La France Profonde." In 25 years, I've managed to get only half way. I need to pick up the pace a bit if I am to complete his monumental work. And I will, as the page turns again for another phase of life. 5-stars.

I bought this for a college level course and thoroughly enjoyed it, however, the edition that I received by First Rate Publishers didn't include a Table of Contents, any page numbers, or any of the publishing information. With that being said, I found using this text for the purpose of school challenging as I couldn't include citations, however, if you are buying this just for pure enjoyment I fully recommend this version!

What is there to say? This is the original translation of the first volume of Proust's masterpiece, and slightly better translations are available today. Don't let this stop you. What a blessing to have this classic on Kindle instead of having to drag a big volume around. Too bad the later volumes are still under copyright and not yet available digitally.

This version has the most horrid typesetting you can image. The print is unbearable. You don't have to be an expert in graphics and layout to look at this page and look aghast with horror. One of the ugliest jobs of printing I've ever see of a classic. I was so disappointed that I immediately went online to return the book to the store but with the economics, the store said for me to just keep it. Even with a good conscience, I can't give this book away, or donate it--I must throw it away. Yes, the cover photo of Proust is enticing, but what's inside is horrific! Don't buy this version!

*Never* buy anything from "joannabond.co.uk" without inspecting it first. The "book" is a Xeroxed copy of an out-of-copying right book, which 1) actually shows the Xerox copy lines, and 2) is small, barely readable type.

I had never heard of this translator before but this is the best version of Proust I've ever read. You read the other translations and the book is pretty lifeless. Here it's bursting with energy. Does anybody know if this translator did the other volumes too, and, if so, where to find them? Much obliged for any leads.

A beautiful book, with a lovely large format and excellent annotations, but I am not 100%
convinced by the new translation. A great introduction to Proust, but missing the poetic flow of the original.

I downloaded and compared, paragraph by paragraph, previews of four or five translations of Swann's Way. I had never read Proust before and cannot read the original; my criteria were clarity and English diction rather than fidelity. I've found this translation to be most readable.

Carter's annotation is immensely helpful in providing background and interesting facts throughout the novel. Likewise, the revised translation makes this version more approachable than the original Moncrieff. The binding is very high-quality for a paperback.

Ouch! The picture on this edition's cover demonstrates someone's failed understanding of the novel's most famous episode, and unfortunately betrays the meticulousness with which this edition of the novel was supposedly prepared by Prof. Carter.

To my mind there is one reason to purchase this edition of Proust's novel: Prof. Carter's annotations. As previous reviewers have stated, they are elegantly placed in the text's margins, many are well-chosen and are sure to illuminate many of the novel's details and references, otherwise likely lost on 21st-century readers of the novel in English. As a biographer of Proust, Prof. Carter demonstrates an impressive knowledge of Proust and his cultural milieu. Bravo! However, while praising many of Carter's annotations as "exemplary," Leland de la Durantaye, in a review for the Boston Review online ("Style Over Substance," 6/16/2014) faults them for too often foreshadowing things to come in the novel, being non sequiter, being too precise to be meaningful, and for being inconsistent. In sum, annotations are really helpful in navigating Proust's novel; Carter's are to be admired but are also often strangely idiosyncratic.

As to the merit of Prof. Carter's "translation," be wary of the hype. He and Yale University Press have a somewhat incoherent pitch: Scott Moncrieff's "extraordinarily fine" translation is "generally regarded as the best rendering of any foreign work into the English language" (ix)...but, well, ok, it's not so "best" that it doesn't need tinkering with...for the third time!

For this is actually the THIRD (oy!) revision of Scott Moncrieff's original English translation, first published in 1922. There is nothing really wrong with any of the other three English translations still in print (two of them based on Scott Moncrieff); they are all excellent examples of the translator's art, all faithful renditions of Proust's French, and there is not one of them I wouldn't recommend (that is, all except James Grieve's translation of Vol. 2 for Penguin, a real disaster). Prof Carter states in his Introduction that "previous revisions were not always felicitous or accurate" (xiv). I simply don't find this to be a compelling argument for revisiting Scott Moncrieff's translation for a third time. Infelicities are not deal-breakers (ALL translations have infelicities); the examples of inaccuracies he gives are unfortunate but not egregious. Meh! In the domain of translation there is forever room to quibble.

Let's be honest, when it comes to producing a "new" edition of "A la recherche du temps perdu" for sale in English, it's always going to be easier and cheaper to revise a previous translation that exists in the public domain than prepare a new one. This edition is a bit of a vanity project, underscored by the fact that in his justification for the new edition, Prof. Carter does not even acknowledge the recent, important, and in general very highly-regarded--and completely new!--translation of the novel published by Penguin. A conspicuous, somewhat shameful silence. And Yale University Press chooses to commemorate the novel's centenary by hoping to garner some prestige and make a buck or two along the way by publishing a "new and better"--strike that--"revised and better," yet arguably gratuitous, edition of the novel.

To conclude: Reading this revision of an existing translation will give you an excellent sense of what Proust wrote, and Prof. Carter's annotations, while sometimes mannered, will certainly enrich that experience.

Proust's profoundly thoughtful quasi-memoir of his childhood is one of the finest pieces of prose ever written in any language. And although its scrutiny of life experiences is sometimes so minute as to be challenging to persons accustomed to the terse, event-driven storytelling of contemporary prose, Proust's sheer stylistic virtuosity makes the effort more than worthwhile.

It is the strangest thing, to be driving endlessly on what seems to be some spiral path but to be entangled with the landscape in some extraordinary way. I'm no literary scholar, but if someone wants to remain reading prose in search of being carried by a story, i would not recommend even to approach this book... at least that was my experience; and i can't see a way back... perhaps time, but not this time.

Good translation using more concise language for Proust's long winding lovely passages yet able to capture the essence , beauty and vivid flowering descriptions. But overall very readable , beautiful n accurate !